Friday Afternoon News

The latest in the wave of recent iPhone rumours is a leaked Foxconn document which claims the next iPhone will have a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2GB of RAM. With the rear-facing camera’s first-ever megapixel upgrade since the iPhone 4S in 2011, the leaked manufacturing schematic also says the camera will be capable of 4K video capture — a feature that’s been present in other smartphones, but will be a first for the iPhone. The front-facing camera also gets an upgrade, going from 1.2 megapixels to a rumoured 5 megapixels.

A report from South Korea suggests Apple will be making no external changes to the next model of Apple Watch, instead focusing on miniaturising the internal components to fit in a bigger battery. With battery life of the Apple Watch already being very decent, it’s great to see Apple keeping the form factor for at least two generations, which also ensures any straps you have bought will work with the second-generation hardware. The source also claims Apple will be looking at improving outdoor readability of the sapphire display.

The full range of colours for the upcoming iPod refresh includes a lovely selection of the usual silver, space grey, and Product(RED), but also has very nice shades of pink, light gold, and deep blue. While there’s no indication of a potential release date, the date that appears on the iPod touch home screen says Tuesday 14th, which is about two weeks from now.

Apple has updated its page of executive biographies, with the main change being Jony Ive’s promotion to Chief Design Officer. Alan Dye, Vice President of User Interface Design and Richard Howarth, Vice President of Industrial Design, have also been added to the page, with bios of their own.

Six Colors has a little story about a Late 2008 MacBook Pro that’s being prepared for OS X El Capitan. It’s not about the connectivity options that laugh in the face of single-port MacBooks — this thing has FireWire 800 and an ExpressCard/34 slot — but the fact that a machine from that era can run Apple’s latest operating system.

I’ve seen a couple of people wonder what the “Likes” in Apple Music are supposed to do, and over The Loop, Jim Dalrymple explains it like this: instead of “tuning” the station like you might expect (and like Pandora does), Likes affect the “For You” section of Apple Music that contains custom-built playlists, albums, and songs.

Speaking to music site Pitchfork, Trent Reznor says the experience is what matters when it comes to Apple Music. His full interview has details on his role in helping shape Apple Music and his thoughts on the music industry in general. Meanwhile, TechCrunch says Apple Music solves the problem of people not knowing what to stream, offering up a plethora of options for those that don’t know what they want: personalised suggestions, curated playlists, and more, on top of your existing iTunes library and the always-on, Beats 1 radio station.

Apple silently removed iTunes Home Sharing with the iOS 8.4 update, killing off a feature that was introduced as a way of sharing your iTunes library between computers and devices. If you’re an Apple Music member it might not mean that much, but if you have a particularly esoteric collection of music this might be the worst news ever. Apple Music trial users are also complaining of iCloud Music Library renaming and straight-out deleting local content.

IMore explains why tracks re-downloaded from Apple Music come with DRM, even ones that were uploaded DRM-free. There’s a way of keeping your tracks DRM-free, but it involves keeping an active iTunes Match subscription alongside your Apple Music one — hardly an ideal situation, as the two services overlap somewhat.

And last but not least this afternoon, @Beats1Plays is a Twitter account that attempts to tell you what was played or is playing on Beats 1. While you’re following that one, give @appletalk_au some love, too, if you’re not already.